An Exploratory Study To Wikinews Website

In the late 1990s, "citizen journalism movement" has deeply influenced the media industry. It roots in the Web 2.0 trend which associated with interactive information sharing and collaboration on the internet. Citizen journalism is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information for a democratic society," according to the book "We the Media"(Gillmor,2004).Wikinews is a news website which allows anyone with internet access to publish and edit story directly on its site without prior authorization or registration. Compared to other citizen journalism website, it best represents the spirit of freedom and openness in virtual world. Anyone is welcomed to participate in it. To tribute to the previous sister project Wikipedia, Wikinews established some fundamental rules that quite assembly, such as "Objectivity", "Global vision", "No invasion of copyright", "Wiki style writing" etc.This article examines the way in which Wikinews contributors negotiate its rules, such as "neutral point of view", "wikistyle writing", "accuracy", and how the rules work in editing procedures.